"You can commence to get hold of the story now, Karen. You remember the Baron. A sad, stately man he was, as cultured and intellectual as could be and going in the best society. Mercedes had found pretty quick that there wasn't much fun in being married to a yellow-haired boy who lived on the money she made and wasn't a mite in society. And the Baron was just crazy over her in his dignified, reverential way. Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Talcott pausing in a retrospect over this vanished figure, "Poor fellow! I guess he came to rue the day he ever set eyes on her. Well, Mercedes made out to him how terrible her life was and how she was tied to a dissipated, worthless man who lived on her and was unfaithful to her. And it's true that Baldwin Tanner behaved as he shouldn't; but he was a weak creature and she'd disillusionized him so and made him so miserable that he just got reckless. And he'd never asked any more than to live in a garret with her and adore her, and paint his lanky people and eat bread and cheese; he told me so, poor boy; he just used to lay his head down on my lap and cry like a baby sometimes. But Mercedes made it out that she was a victim and he was a serpent; and she believed it, too; that's the power of her; she's just determined to be in the right always. So at last she made it all out. She couldn't divorce Baldwin, being a Catholic; but she made it out that she wasn't really married to him. It appears he didn't get baptized by his folks; they hadn't believed in baptizing; they were free-thinkers. And the Baron got his powerful friends to help and they all set to work at the Pope, and they got him to fix it up, and Mercedes's marriage was annulled and she was free to marry again. That's what was in her mind in sending for me, you see; she'd quarrelled with her folks and she wanted a steady respectable person who knew all about her to stand by her and chaperon her while she was getting rid of Baldwin. Mercedes has always been pretty careful about her reputation; she's hardly ever taken any risks.